Dr. Wear received a B.A. in Applied Physics from the University of California, San Diego and M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University. He is a Physicist at the US Food and Drug Administration. He has co-authored 114 peer-reviewed publications and has received over 6150 citations on Google Scholar. These publications include 38 in IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (IEEE-TUFFC). He is a Life Fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM).

He received the 2019 AIUM Joseph H. Holmes Basic Science Pioneer Award. Each year the AIUM gives this award to only one clinical scientist and only one basic scientist.

He served as Associate Editor-in-Chief for IEEE-TUFFC (2019-2021). He has served as Associate Editor of IEEE-TUFFC (2002-2021; 2025-present), J Acoust. Soc. Am. (2012-present), and Ultrasonic Imaging (2013-2024). He serves on the editorial board for IEEE Access (2024-present). He served as Guest Editor for four special issues of IEEE TUFFC.

He was the Technical Program Chair of the 2008 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS), Beijing, China. He was the General Program Chair of the 2017 IEEE IUS, Washington, DC, USA (1311 attendees, 945 presentations).

He has served as the Chair of the AIUM Technical Standards Committee (2014-2016), AIUM Bioeffects Committee (2021-2023), AIUM Basic Science and Instrumentation Community (2004-2006 and 2014-2016), and AIUM Therapeutic Ultrasound Community (2013-2015). He is Chair of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group 333 on Magnetic Resonance Guided Focused Ultrasound Quality Assurance.

He has given 50 invited talks at major scientific conferences. He has organized and presented (or will present in 2025), by invitation, at seven short (4-hour) courses at IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposia (IUS) on topics related to hydrophone measurements. He has given extended-duration presentations on hydrophones by invitation from IEEE IUS (30 minutes, 2017), AIUM (60 minutes, 2022), ASA (45 minutes, 2024), and the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU) (30 minutes, 2025).

Although he has made significant contributions in other areas, this report will focus on his work in acoustic output measurement methodology, his proposed topic as Distinguished Lecturer. Accurate hydrophone acoustic pressure measurements are critical to demonstrate safety and effectiveness of ultrasound devices in addition to ensuring reproducibility of ultrasound experiments and treatments. Acoustic pressures transmitted by ultrasound devices are commonly measured using hydrophones. Hydrophones distort pressure signals in two main ways: 1) filtering broadband ultrasound pressure waves via frequency-dependent sensitivity and 2) spatial averaging of pressure fields that are not uniform across the hydrophone sensitive element.

The most authoritative international standard for performance of hydrophone measurements for medical applications was developed by the International Electrotechnical Commission [1]. This standard was co-authored by a team of the most renowned hydrophone experts in the world. Out of 97 references in this standard’s bibliography, ten are peer-reviewed publications for which Dr. Wear served as lead author, indicating international acclaim for his work in this area.

He derived and validated advanced methodology for deconvolution for frequency-dependent sensitivity. He reported the first validated deconvolution methods for frequency-dependent sensitivity in capsule and Fabry-Perot-interferometric-type fiber-optic hydrophones [2].

With the goal of developing models for deconvolving for hydrophone distortion mechanisms, he has made fundamental contributions to understanding hydrophone physics. He co-authored the first peer-reviewed publications to demonstrate that measurements of directivity for needle [3], reflectance-type fiber optic [4], and capsule [5] hydrophones are consistent with a “rigid piston” (RP) model, which postulates that the normal component of the particle velocity at the fluid / sensitive-element interface is zero. Directivity is important because it may be used to derive the hydrophone frequency-dependent effective sensitive element size. Spatial averaging effects are found by integrating pressure fields over the effective sensitive element area, not the manufacturer-specified geometrical sensitive element area. At low frequencies, the effective sensitive element area is much larger than the geometrical sensitive area [5].

 With empirically validated expressions for frequency-dependent effective sensitive areas, he derived and validated a full spatiotemporal deconvolution model using functions Fourier transformed to the temporal and spatial frequency domains, based on physics of nonlinear propagation of ultrasound from focused sources [6], [7].

Prior to 2020, most manufacturers of diagnostic ultrasound systems marketed in the USA did not correct for spatial averaging effects because a published method for doing so did not exist for rectangular-geometry transducers (the most common geometry for diagnostic applications). In 2021, he reported the first derivation and experimental validation for hydrophone spatial averaging correction for rectangular-geometry transducers [8][9]. Because of this work, the AIUM in 2023 reduced its maximum recommended scanning times by 33% for ARFI and pulsed Doppler examinations when bone is near the transducer focal point [10].

In 2022, therapeutic ultrasound experts published a paper on recommended reporting methods for scientific publications [11], citing Dr. Wear’s work on deconvolving for distorting effects of hydrophone sensitivity [2] and spatial averaging [12]. In 2024, the International Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation Safety and Standards Consortium published a position paper that identified hydrophone spatial averaging as a potentially significant source of error in transcranial ultrasonic stimulation system characterization [13], citing Dr. Wear’s work [5],[6]. Dr. Wear’s algorithms have been cited in papers on many applications, including cavitation monitoring [14], elastography [15], and ophthalmology [16].

1. International Electrotechnical Commission: IEC 62127-1 “Ultrasonics–Hydrophones–Part 1: Measurement and characterization of medical ultrasonic fields up to 40 MHz” Edition 2 (2022).
2. Wear et al., IEEE TUFFC, 61, 62-75, 2014.
3. Wear et al., IEEE TUFFC, 65, 1781-1788, 2018.
4. Wear and Howard, IEEE TUFFC 65, 2343-2348, 2018.
5. Wear and Shah, IEEE TUFFC, 70, 112-119, 2023.
6. Wear, IEEE TUFFC, 69, 1243-1256, 2022.
7. Wear et al., IEEE TUFFC, 69, 1257-1267, 2022.
8. Wear, IEEE TUFFC, 68, 358-375, 2021.
9. Wear et al., IEEE TUFFC, 68, 376-388, 2021.
10. American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, J. Ultrasound Med., 42: E74-E75, 2023.
11. Padilla and ter Haar, Ultrasound in Med. & Biol., 48, 1299-1308, 2022.
12. Wear and Howard, IEEE Trans UFFC 66:1453-1464, 2019.
13. Martin et al., Brain Stimul. 17, 607-15, 2024.
14. Lin, O’Reilly, Hynynen, Sensors¸ 23, 2023.
15. Zhang, Bottenus, Jin, Nightingale, Ultrasound in Med. & Biol., 49, 734-749, 2023.
16. Hoerig, Hoang, Aichele, Catheline, Mamou, Ophthalmic Physiol. Opt., 43, 544-557, 2023.